Newell & Rosemary Alexander Interview

photo: Alan Mercer

Newel and Rosemary Alexander appear to have it all and what makes that even better is they appear to deserve it all. We had the opportunity to visit after our shoot.


AM: Most people know you from your characters on Sordid Lives. What else would you like people to know about you?

RA: Well I think being married to Newell Alexander is probably the most wonderful and amazing thing about my life. I love what Noleta says in Sordid Lives, “I’m just a mama and a wife.” If I am one thing it would be a homemaker. I take care of the grandkids and I take care of all the dinners. I am the hostess for the family.

AM: When do you have a chance to work on your music?

RA: Newell and I work on music in the kitchen while I am cooking. He brings his guitar in and sits at the table. The challenge for me is to learn a harmony and the words while I am making cornbread. That’s why we called our CD “The Cornbread Society” and other than that when we came here from Texas my goal was to be a career actress.

AM: Can you explain what you mean by that?

RA: I wanted to make my living as an actress. Three years ago I retired from the Screen Actors Guild with a pension. That is my mark of achievement. I raised my children and lived my life as a professional actress.

NA: I am just amazed by how Rosemary and I have gotten together. Rosemary is from the hills of Kentucky. Her Dad was a farmer and he would go to Detroit during the hard times and work in the auto factories. They were real hillbillies. She moved to Detroit when she was nine and ended up growing up there.

AM: Where are you from Newell?

NA: I’m from a little town in West Texas called Borger, which is by Amarillo. I moved to Albuquerque when I was twelve or thirteen. These places were totally devoid of creativity. So I am amazed that two little kids like us who weren’t around any art, other than Rosemary having music in her family, actually got into the arts.

AM: Did your family encourage you to be creative?

NA: In my family musicians were considered trash, and actors too. It’s amazing to me that two small town people can come to Hollywood and have a tiny bit of success. We are actually working actors. If there is a middle class of actors, we are it.

AM: So you were unprepared for this success?

NA: Getting a TV show at this late date in both of our careers is like having tenure as a professor. I’m retired from SAG too. We are thrilled to be associated with a show like that and we have worked very hard to get that together.

AM: What do you mean by that?

NA: I doubt it would have ever happened if it weren’t for us. We knew Del very early on. We are just people in the Valley trying to live good clean lives.

AM: What else are you known for?

RA: Besides Sordid Lives which is certainly the crown in my career as an actress, Newell and I fell into producing a radio show for the Autry Museum in 1989 and did one show as a special event. At the time we thought who’s going to care anything about radio drama. We wrote a script and produced a show and it was a huge success for the museum. So they asked us if we would come back and do four shows a year. We, not having real good sense said, yes.

AM: How long did you do that?

RA: For twelve years we produced four original live radio dramas with an orchestra and live sound effects and sixteen actors. After we did a couple of shows and we saw that we could do a show that people liked we decided to give it a mission, to tell all of the stories of the West.

AM: Did you incorporate any young talent?

RA: We found a young African American writer and trained her in writing radio drama because it’s not a known form generally. She was successful at it and went on to get into the Disney writing fellowship program and ultimately ended up as a career writer. Then we found a young Latina who was really unproven but she wrote a poem for us that was so clever and so funny that I said you can do this. We convinced her to write a radio drama and she went on to become the story editor on the George Lopez show. She is now in a program called Show Runners so she is a superstar writer. We also developed a young Jewish writer and a young American Indian as well as a Chinese writer.

AM: What made you stop doing them?

RA: After twelve years I realized we had achieved our goal so we retired and the show went on for a while. The achievement in those shows and the impact that it had on the different cultural communities in the city was extremely rewarding.

NA: And through that we were able to promote the LA Mad Dogs as voice over artists.

AM: Tell me how that got started.

NA: We worked for a woman in the voice over business and then we formed our own company and because we had the radio show we were able to promote within the Hollywood community that we did have the “real deal” voices to tell the truth. So that’s what we became known as, the real solid voice over group, that could do realistic background voices, not just cartoon stuff. So 1989 was the beginning of the LA Mad Dogs.

AM: Tell me a little bit more about your music?

NA: Well as far as music goes we are just pretenders. We have known a lot of wonderful musicians. Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash were dear friends of ours. We worked with them early on in the 1970’s and remained friends with them.

AM: I think that qualifies you as authentic musicians.

RA: We are living room singers. We started off with a chili cooking team. We started winning the amateur contests they have. We would do a little act with some songs and get the rest of the team to back us up. We took all of our kids and we have a son who is a really good guitar player. We would entertain and that was our training in music.

NA: It’s more of a hobby really, the music end of it.

RM: When we first met Newell had just got a guitar so he learned how to play and I’m from the Kentucky hill country so when everybody got together we sang. I was always an alto and couldn’t hit a high note so I quickly learned to sing harmony and I hear harmony now. We did it for fun in the living room.

AM: So you started booking music gigs?

RM: The first job we booked in California was the Kellogg’s leggo of my Eggo campaign. We got it because we were authentic. They interviewed a lot of real country western singers and scared us to death. We said we are never going to get this but they told us they loved us because we were real authentic. While we consider our music humble the people who back us up kick ass.

AM: Do you believe in destiny?

RM: Well I do. I can’t think of any other way that Newell and I could have ended up together. There was just no way we could have or should have met, much less come together as a couple unless you say it was destiny.

NA: Well I think it was destiny. I was at my advertising office one day with an assistant who’s name is Peter Gent, he wrote the novel North Dallas Forty. Well Pete and I checked out the Pearl Beer booth at the Texas State Fair since they were a client. We decided to go to the automobile building to see all the new cars and cool looking girls. Well I saw the most gorgeous girl in a silver lame’ outfit and a silver turban and it was Rosemary. She was getting ready to go on a break so we went and had a root beer and a corny dog. I had her bring her book up to the agency and hired her several times for commercials.

AM: Was it love at first sight?

NA: We were just good friends for five years. I thought she was happily married and she thought I was, but neither one of us were. In the end we finally got together against all odds. So yes I do believe in destiny. We were destined.

RA: I also believe in destiny because of our relationship with Del Shores.

AM: Can you explain?

RA: Del came out here from Texas very young, trying to be an actor. He had a roommate who was an actor and worked with us. Del came to see him perform and saw us. Later on when he was doing his first play he remembered Newell and called him to be an actor.

AM: Was it a big production?

RA: Del will you this himself. They had no money and scraped together what they could. I came in and did all the press shots and Newell did all the sets. We invested financially that way to keep the show going and get it happening.

AM: Did you believe in Del Shores that much?

RA: Del met our daughter Kelly and they got married and had two gorgeous children. Then Del came out, so they separated.

AM: What did that do to your family?

RA: Nothing changed within the family except they didn’t live together anymore. Del was still writing for us and we were still shooting the pictures and designing the sets. I looked at it later and I said, ‘You know Del came out here and he chose the kind of family that he wanted to be a part of that would love and support him. I think that was fate that we all came together.

AM: That must have been a difficult time for all of you.

NA: Yes it was a difficult time. It was very challenging. At my seventieth birthday Del said, ‘I told Newell the situation, that I was gay’ and Newell said, ‘well shit happens so let’s move forward.’ That’s exactly what I told him.

RA: He also said not many people can claim to have made there ex father-in-law a gay icon.

AM: How have you managed to be successful in your marriage? What is a key phrase that would sum it up?

NA: Both of us are tough. We are both tough people. Career wise we were tough. We hung in there and plowed the money we were making back into our careers. We have never skimped on our careers at all. We have both been able to be honest with each other. We tell the truth. We don’t yell or argue. I think we have just hung tough. Rosemary actually runs everything. I’m basically in charge of security.

RA: I just think we were meant to be together. We are totally different. We have very different abilities and inabilities. I always say together we make one whole person. I always loved him the way I loved my kids. No matter what happened I could not, not love him.

Learn more about Newell and Rosemary at their web site http://www.prankproductions.com/